This suspenseful thriller came out in March, but I picked it up now because author Amy Stuart is coming to the Vancouver Writers Fest. It’s a taut, dark, psychological novel about a young woman named Clare who is on the run from an abusive husband.

Clare has been approached by a mysterious man named Malcolm who asks her to help him find another woman who has gone missing, Shayna Fowles. Fowles disappeared from the remote small town of Blackmore, where Clare is now searching for her. Clare is undercover and has only a cellphone to communicate with the enigmatic Malcolm, who appears or sends messages on his own timeline.

Shayna was a drug addict who townspeople last saw passed out at a party in the woods. Did she fall off a cliff on her way home? Was she murdered, perhaps by her ex-husband Jared or the local doctor, Derek? Or, like Clare, has she simply run away from a situation she could no longer tolerate?

Clare is determined to find out. To do so, she integrates herself into the local party scene, making friends with Sara, a single mom who lost her husband in a mining accident that decimated the town five years earlier, and Charlie, a man who lost his entire family in the explosion and is now the town’s drug dealer.

Clare’s own past includes both drug abuse and physical abuse, so she is vulnerable as she investigates. But she’s also a crack shot with a rifle and determined to both find Shayna and continue with her own escape. Readers will grow to love Clare, who is an endearing mixture of both helplessly weak and extremely strong at the same time.

Author Amy Stuart has created a likable heroine, complete with some pretty serious flaws. Between Clare and the other characters of Blackmore, the story is both haunting and compelling.

Stuart is a recent masters’ graduate from the University of British Columbia and now lives in Toronto. She won the 2011 Writers’ Union of Canada Short Prose Competition for Developing Writers, and was a finalist for the 2012 Vanderbilt/Exile Award. Still Mine is the first of a two-book series, so readers can look forward to Clare coming back to continue her harrowing journey.

Amy Stuart is appearing at the Vancouver Writers Fest later this month. Tracy Sherlock is The Vancouver Sun’s books editor.

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